Electronic messaging systems, such as voice mail systems and email systems, have been widely adopted in most commercial and non-commercial arenas for storing and retrieving digitized messages. Such messaging systems require a mechanism for notifying users of unreviewed messages.
Several methods of message notification are known in the art. In conventional voice messaging systems, for instance, a subscriber may be notified that recorded messages are awaiting the subscriber's review using one of a variety of notification schemes. In some messaging systems, a display light connected to a panel of a telephone may flash on and off to identify that recorded messages await retrieval. In other instances, subscribers of voice mail systems are notified that messages are awaiting review by way of an interrupted dial tone which is transmitted from the earpiece of a phone when the subscriber picks up the receiver. While such signalling techniques provide a user with notification of a waiting message, they do not provide the user with further information identifying the party that left the message or other information related to the source of the message.
With digital display phones, a user subscribing to message waiting services receives a notification from the voice messaging server when a message has been recorded for the user. The notification typically includes a signal which triggers the display of a predefined text message, such as “MSG”, on the phone display. In a number of display phones, a series of ASCII text characters are transmitted to the display phone and are displayed to notify the subscribing user of the pending messages within the user's voice mail, although in such cases, the information provided is limited to textual information identifying the caller name and/or number associated with a recorded message.
In other messaging systems, such as electronic mail (email) systems, users may log into their email accounts and download stored email. If messages are received locally, a single line of text typically identifying the sender's name, the date the message was received and the title of the message are displayed in a viewing window within the email application. In systems such as HotMail(TM) and Yahoo(TM) mail services, users connect remotely over the Internet to review email on web pages which present the user with a viewing window containing the aforementioned textual message information similar to locally managed email applications. In other cases, PC messaging servers such as Microsoft Exchange(TM) flash a small icon in the bottom of the user's screen to alert the user that a message has arrived but do not provide any indication as to who has sent the message.
Although the provision of textual information associated with a notification of waiting messages can provide the user with some information pertaining to the waiting messages, it would be desirable to deploy message waiting notification services which facilitate the ease of identifying the source of a recorded message with graphical images. It would be particularly desirable that message waiting notification systems provide graphical notifications to a called party including caller selected graphical images associated with the caller for display at the called party's end-user communications equipment.
As will be further appreciated, the continuing convergence of most forms of user traffic has spawned a growing demand for telephony messaging systems and other user messaging systems that offer communications services which leverage the opportunities presented by integrating telephony and data network infrastructures. In such a converging telecommunications market, it would be desirable that a method of graphically notifying a user of waiting messages have application to a number of communications networks, including telephony and data networks.